Congratulations to Maya Fennig, Recipient of the prestigious 2019 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship

Helping refugees heal: Improving Eritrean refugees’ access to effective mental health care

Maya Fennig is a PhD candidate at McGill’s School of Social Work. Her current research interests are in the intersections between social work, psychiatry and ethnography. Her dissertation research explores how culture and context shape the way Eritrean refugees living in Israel express, experience and make sense of psychological distress. By examining Eritrean’s idioms of distress as well as their local attempts to cope with and recover from trauma, Maya’s study will promote culturally appropriate and effective policy and program interventions that seek to improve the mental health of refugees. Findings of her research will also contribute to knowledge and mental health theory regarding both universal and culture-specific aspects of trauma and resilience processes.
(Photo courtesy of: The Jeanne Sauvé Foundation)

The recipients are also featured in a McGill Reporter article. A formal celebration in their honour will be held in the Fall.